Although the constitution of 1820 provided for the establishment of public schools, it was not until 1839 that the state's public school system became a reality through legislation creating the office of state superintendent of common schools and establishing a permanent school fund. Missouri schools were officially segregated from 1875 to 1954, when the US Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education; the state's school segregation law was not taken off the books until 1976. In that year, nearly 37% of all black students were in schools that were 99–100% black, a condition fostered by the high concentration of black Missourians in the state's two largest cities. In 1983, a desegregation plan was adopted for St. Louis-area public schools that called for 3,000 black students to be transferred from city to county schools.
In 2000, 81.3% of all Missourians 25 years of age or older were high school graduates, and 21.6% had obtained bachelor's degrees or higher. The total enrollment for fall 1999 in Missouri's public schools stood at 914,110. Of these, 648,758 attended schools from kindergarten through grade eight, and 265,352 attended high school. Minority students made up approximately 21% of the total enrollment in public elementary and secondary schools in 2001. Total enrollment was estimated at 897,081 in fall 2000 but expected to drop to 914,000 by fall 2005. Enrollment in nonpublic schools in fall 2001 was 122,387. Expenditures for public education in 2000/01 were estimated at $5,385,046.
As of fall 2000, there were 319,515 students enrolled in college or graduate school. In 1997, minority students comprised 14.1% of total postsecondary enrollment. Missouri has 30 public and 26 private institutions of higher education. The University of Missouri, established in 1839, was the first state-supported university west of the Mississippi River. It has four campuses: Columbia (site of the world's oldest and one of the best-known journalism schools), Kansas City, Rolla, and St. Louis. The Rolla campus, originally founded in 1870 as a mining and engineering school, is still one of the nation's leading universities specializing in technology. The majority of students attend the Columbia facility.
Lincoln University, a public university for blacks until segregation ended in 1954, is located in Jefferson City. There are five regional state universities, at Warrensburg, Maryville, Cape Girardeau, Springfield, and Kirksville, and three state colleges, at St. Louis, St. Joseph, and Joplin. Two leading independent universities, Washington and St. Louis, are located in St. Louis, as is the Concordia Seminary, an affiliate of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the center of much theological and political controversy during the 1970s. The Department of Higher Education offers grants and guaranteed loans to Missouri students.